What is ASA's IQA Challenge?

A:

Americans for Safe Access’ complaint cites 25 violations under the IQA, alleging that the DEA website currently contains inaccurate statements that do not meet informational standards required by the law. Making matters worse, the DEA continues to distribute statements about the efficacy of medical cannabis and its risks, which have been refuted by the DEA itself in the recent “Denial of Petition to Initiate Proceedings to Reschedule Marijuana,(DPR)” issued August 12, 2016.

In the DPR, the DEA itself made statements that directly contradict information in “The Dangers and Consequences of Marijuana Abuse” and “Drugs of Abuse.” In ASA’s IQA petition, we are calling out the DEA’s own statements, which confirm scientific facts about medical cannabis and analysis, that has long been accepted by a majority of the scientific community. Our request is simple: the DEA must change its public information to better comport with its own expressed views, so that Congress has access to the appropriate tools to make informed decisions about public health.

Elected officials rely on the DEA to provide them fact-based information about medical cannabis to inform policy making. Success in correcting this information will mean politicians can no longer use the misinformation about (1) the gateway drug hypothesis (2) irreversible cognitive decline in adults; and cannabis causing (3) psychosis or (4) lung cancer to deny patients access to medical cannabis.